Fig 1.
Histological examinations of lung of rat from the control and model groups.
A: Lung from a control rat (HE, ×200); B: Lung from a rat of pulmonary fibrosis filled with inflammatory cell infiltration, thickened alveolar walls, damaged alveolar structures, increased fibronodules and macrophage aggregation (HE, ×200). C: Lung from a control rat (Masson, ×200); D: Lung from a rat of pulmonary fibrosis filled with more and thicker collagen fibers, damaged alveolar septum accompanied by a small amount of inflammatory cell infiltration, forming a diffuse fibrosis nodular changes (Masson, ×200).
Table 1.
Effects of silica on lung alveolitis and pulmonary fibrosis (means ± SD).
Fig 2.
DEPs between the control and model groups.
A shows volcano plot of proteins. The threshold set for DEPs was a fold change (FC) ≥1.8 and p value < 0.05. 145 proteins are up-regulated (red) and 140 proteins are down-regulated (green). B shows heat map of DEPs between the control and model groups, with folds > ± 1.8 and p value < 0.05. Each column represents a sample and each row represents a significant protein. [28S21], [28S22] and [28S23] represent model samples; [28C15], [28C16] and [28C17] represent control samples. 285 proteins were found to be significantly differentially expressed.
Fig 3.
PRM verification of proteins identified by TMT analysis.
Six proteins were selected for validation of the TMT data. The abscissa represents the protein ID. The ordinate represents the log2 (Fold change) of the DEPs measured by TMT and PRM. The trends of the level of expression of these proteins obtained by PRM were similar to TMT.
Fig 4.
GO analysis of 285 DEPs between the control and model groups.
The top ten biological process categories, cellular component categories and molecular function are presented.
Fig 5.
Scatter diagram of the enriched KEGG pathways of the 285 DEP.
The top twenty terms are shown. Degree of enrichment was measured by Rich factor, Q value, and the number of genes enriched in one pathway. The Rich factor is the ratio of the number of differentially expressed genes enriched in one pathway and the total annotation number. The greater the Rich factor value, the higher the degree of enrichment. The Q value is a variant of a p value, for which lower numbers equate to significant enrichment. The Y-axis represents the name of the pathway and the X-axis represents the Rich factor. The point size is the number of differentially expressed genes in one pathway, and the color of the point indicates the range of the Q value.
Fig 6.
The interacted network of proteins was analyzed by STRING software.
Adual-color code was used, with red and green indicating up- and down regulation, respectively.